Out of God's Hands
The child leaders of a Karen rebel group seek refuge in Thailand after years of jungle warfare
By ROBERT HORN Ratchaburi
The Time-JANUARY 29, 2001 VOL. 157 NO. 4
To the Karen, they were deities. To the Thais, they were demons. But when they staggered down from the mountains of Burma at dusk last Tuesday, Johnny and Luther Htoo brought neither miracles nor M-16s, just Bibles in their rucksacks.
The tiny teenage twins, leaders of the mysterious rebel force known as God's Army, approached a company of Thai soldiers and asked for sanctuary. Whisked to a police compound in the nearby town of Suan Pheung, they soon found themselves exchanging bewildered stares with Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai and a dozen of Thailand's top generals.
As Chuan inspected his prizes, he gently stroked the boys' lice-ridden locks. "He totally demystified them," says Sunai Phasuk, a Burma specialist with Forum Asia, a human rights group. In Buddhist Thailand, where the head is the most sacred part of the body, that one simple gesture did more to strip them of their aura than any number of blunders in the jungle or defeats in battle. They had become plainly, simply mortal. You don't pat a god on the head.
God's Army, an insurgent group of Burma's Karen minority, shot its way to international prominence a year ago when 10 rebels from its camp stormed a hospital in the Thai town of Ratchaburi, taking 500 patients and staff hostage. After a brief standoff, the rebels surrendered and then, according to Thai witnesses, were executed, shot at point-blank range. The bloodshed briefly focused the world's attention on some strange tales seeping from the Burmese jungle.
The twins had never ventured more than a few kilometers from their base on Kersay Doh, or God's Mountain, but photos of the wide-eyed, chain-smoking, rifle-toting, 12-year-old leaders were flashed around the world. They became instant objects of fascination and fear.
In the hills of Burma where the Karen have been fighting for independence for half a century, Johnny and Luther already were folkloric legends, renowned for beating back entire companies of well-armed Burmese soldiers. Their followers, believers in the Karen blend of animism, Buddhism and Christianity, swore the pair had magical powers and were impervious to bullets.
Were the charismatic twins truly messianic leaders of a desperate band of rebels, or merely helpful figureheads for veteran Karen insurgents? "We think they may have been used as fronts by older rebels," says General Surayud Chulanont, Commander in Chief of the Thai Army, after debriefing them. Surayud was the architect of the strategy that induced the boys to surrender. He recruited three Karen village elders in Thailand who had been trading with God's Army to serve as mediators in his negotiations with the rebels. Though they had few chances to speak with the twins directly, they traveled frequently to the group's base.
One of the elders, a cheroot-smoking, leathery-skinned man in his 50s, suspects that the real leaders were three hard-line Karen named Rambo, Samoo and Subiya.
Still, the twins were clearly impressive. "They really did defeat the Burmese with just a handful of men," the elder says. Karen Christian priests who also had frequent contact with God's Army confirm the twins' exploits. If the boys were natural-born fighters, it was clearly in the interests of their band to deify them. "For a people facing a bleak future they represented hope, both military and religious," says Sunai, the Burma specialist.
The end game for Johnny and Luther may have begun on New Year's Eve. That's when Rambo and three other rebels got into a dispute with a group of drunken Thai villagers in the border hamlet of Ban Wan Noi Nai and opened fire, killing six Thais.
A combined force of Thai soldiers, border patrol units and police cut off the rebels' supply routes from Thailand.
Isolated, God's Army managed to subsist primarily on deer and monkey, but the mood in the camp had changed. A Burmese army unit was less than 5 km away, and the ragtag band could feel defeat closing in. It was then that the twins reasserted their control. When an older rebel tried to stop the Karen elder from talking to Luther, the boy cold-cocked the rebel, bloodying his nose. "They were coming to their senses," the elder says. The rebels didn't want to be killed by the Burmese, but they didn't know whether they could trust the Thais. With coaxing from the elders, the boys decided to make the long, slow walk to Thailand.
At the police station in Suan Pheung last week, however, Luther and Johnny Htoo, the saviors of the Karen, suddenly seemed human, boyish actually, in their frailty. Shorn of their weapons and fatigues, they appeared to be scrawny, stunted children smoking Thai cigarettes and munching on shortbread cookies. Johnny and Luther will most likely be allowed to live in a refugee camp with their mother. "They are just kids," observed General Surayud.
Some Karen still refuse to believe the twins are finished. They say the boys will grow strong again and return to vanquish their foes. At that notion, the elder just laughs and says the boys' fighting days are over.
The Karen, however, are a people still in need of a savior. And so in the mist-covered mountains of the Thai-Burma border, many are still praying for the second coming of Luther and Johnny Htoo.